‘Green’ Tint to Clinton’s Natural Resources Team : Environment: Nominees draw protests from ranching and mining interests. Conflicts could arise on grazing fees and water rights.

President-elect Bill Clinton is expected to choose former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt as Interior secretary, transition sources said, rounding out a team to run the nation’s natural resources policy that has drawn cheers from environmentalists but profoundly worries Western developers, ranchers and others.

Babbitt’s appointment could come as early as today, the sources said. Now that Clinton has concluded his two-day economic conference in Little Rock, Ark., transition sources predict a rapid series of Cabinet appointments as the President-elect moves toward completing his top team before Christmas.

Among the appointments to agencies that handle natural resources issues, Clinton has chosen a series of key aides who have a notably “green” tint, in large part because of the influence of Vice President-elect Al Gore.

That slant is deeply troubling to Western mining, ranching and development interests, who have grown comfortable with officials in senior government posts over the last 12 years.

“The idea of Babbitt as Interior secretary sends chills up my spine,” said Chuck Cushman, executive director of the National Inholders Assn. of Battleground, Wash., a group devoted to protecting the rights of people who own property surrounded by federal lands.

Shortly after the election, environmental activists in Washington had drawn up wish lists of people whom they would like to see in senior positions. The leading choice for head of the Environmental Protection Agency was the chief of Florida’s environment department--Carol Browner. Clinton announced her nomination last week.

Similarly, when asked about possible officials to place in charge of the Office of Management and Budget, environmentalists cited Brookings Institution economist Alice Rivlin, a member of the Wilderness Society board of directors. Clinton has since nominated her to the budget office’s No. 2 post.

Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Carmel Valley), chosen to head the OMB, has had a strong environmental voting record in Congress. During past administrations under presidents of both parties, OMB has often tried to squelch environmental initiatives launched elsewhere in the government.

Babbitt, president of the League of Conservation Voters, also has drawn praise from environmentalists. In addition, Sen. Timothy E. Wirth (D-Colo.), who did not run for reelection this year and is leaving the Senate, appears to be the leading candidate for secretary of energy, although opposition to the nomination has grown in recent days.

In his Senate career, Wirth has taken strong environmental stands, including opposition to efforts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil industry prospecting and development.

Babbitt, as governor, ordered the shutdown of an Arizona smelter in 1986 for failure to comply with emissions laws, angering miners, ranchers, farmers and some city dwellers during a complex fight over Arizona’s water supply.

The appointments and prospects so far have gone a long way--but not all the way--toward erasing the skepticism that environmental activists voiced toward Clinton during the campaign, a skepticism born of his mixed record on environmental issues as governor and his hedging of positions during the campaign.

Many protests against Clinton’s appointments have come from traditionally Republican sources--mining companies, ranchers, conservative political figures. Those complaints could foretell trouble as the new Administration wades into a series of issues--from grazing fees to water rights to endangered species protection--that bitterly divide many Western states.

In last month’s election, Clinton carried states in the West that Democrats had not won in a generation. But in many cases, those victories came by only narrow margins.

The complaints from conservatives began as soon as transition officials announced the names of “cluster group” leaders appointed to audit federal agencies. The natural resources cluster is headed by James Gustave Speth, who chaired the Council on Environmental Quality under Jimmy Carter and is now retiring president of the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank that he founded. Its members include activists such as Dan Reicher, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council; Brooks Yeager, a vice president of the National Audubon Society, and WRI senior associate Rafe Pomerance.

Sources for Western interests say they fear that the Clinton Administration will be so focused on environmental issues that it will ignore the impact tougher laws and regulations can have on communities dependent on mining, grazing, timber harvesting and recreation.

William Perry Pendley, president of the Denver-based Mountain States Legal Foundation, a nonprofit conservative public interest law firm, charges that appointing Babbitt and Wirth could result in a “wilderness lockup” that could stymie the creation of new jobs in Rocky Mountain states.

Times staff writers Louis Sahagun in Denver and Rudy Abramson in Washington contributed to this story.